{ "article": { "title" : "Malak Mattar: I couldn’t see colors anymore", "author" : "Malak Mattar, Céline Semaan", "category" : "", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/malak-mattar", "date" : "2025-09-08 10:10:59 -0400", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/malak-mattar--war-1.jpg", "excerpt" : "", "content" : "CÉLINE: Where are you now? In which part of the world?MALAK: I live in London now.CÉLINE: How was your show?MALAK: It was a group show with other artists, mostly Turkish and Lebanese. It was a really fun experience. The theme was about home and belonging.CÉLINE: I wanted to ask you, in your work, there is a palpable sense of home, of belonging. As a Palestinian artist, how do you navigate the line between your personal and the political in your paintings?MALAK: I don’t feel like there’s anything to align between the personal and the political, because everything I do, whether I like it or not, is political, but I always make sure that it reflects my own personal thoughts, my personal feelings, my family, everything in my present life…CÉLINE: Your art has traveled beyond Gaza; it’s reaching international audiences. What does it mean for you to share your art with the rest of the world, to share how it has been for you as a Palestinian person?MALAK: It feels like a beauty being postponed, and it’s like growing up. You grow up as an artist, and you’re given this title, not only as an artist, but as a voice.Every time I speak to my family back home, it’s like, what are you working on? Are you producing paintings? Can you share our struggle? Can you share what we are going through? Can you make our voices heard? When my work reaches beyond my studio, it feels like I’m doing what I can, I’m fulfilling my role as a creative.CÉLINE: Do you feel like it is your responsibility as an artist to carry the voices and the stories of your people?MALAK: Absolutely. Throughout our history, art has always reflected and documented the political struggle, starting with artists who painted the Nakba, painted their personal stories in 1948 when they were displaced. I found, while growing up in Palestine, an art scene that was blooming and expanding despite the restrictions [by the Occupation] on art materials. Artists have always been very resilient… making alternatives to paints, by using natural pigments, alternatives to canvas, by using other paper, and other materials. Every time art supplies were banned or restricted, artists came up with alternatives. Creation is urgent in the context of Palestine.CÉLINE: Where did you grow up?MALAK: In Gaza.CÉLINE: Who are the artists who have inspired you?MALAK: I was exposed to Western art in my family house: Van Gogh’s flowers, Edgar Degas’ dancers, Leonardo DaVinci… I saw these reproductions on the walls growing up. My maternal uncle, Nimit Abu Mazen, is an art professor, but he’s also a multimedia artist. He was born in the ‘50s, and he was a teacher for decades, but it’s important to mention that the United Nations commissioned him to do all the school boards in Arabic. For decades, he worked on that while also teaching. His production was very slow, but his work was very, very beautiful. It focused on women from Palestine… So I grew up in a very artistic household.CELINE: You mentioned restrictions on canvases. What other things was the Israeli occupation forbidding from entering the Gaza Strip when it comes to art materials?MALAK: I struggled to find canvases, especially after wars, and it took months, sometimes a year… At times, I actually had to smuggle canvases into Gaza… usually through expats who worked in Jerusalem. They bought canvases and brushes and came to Gaza. They were not checked by the soldiers, so they were able to bring art supplies. And that’s how I used to paint in 2021 because for months after the May attack, art supplies were not allowed entry… The art supply stores were bombed in 2021. There’s one store called Pins and Pens. It was in the very center of the city, and it was demolished. And there’s another art supply store that was also demolished. The destruction of art and culture has been going on for many, many years, not just since October.CELINE: Why do you think the Israeli occupation is afraid of art?MALAK: They’re afraid of humanization. I would say it’s not art in particular, but any act of us celebrating or painting or writing and sharing poetry is seen as a threat. When the state is built on the delusion that the Other or the Indigenous doesn’t matter, they are dehumanized. When the Indigenous are called vulgar and are labeled as terrorists, you strip away their humanity. So, any act of humanization becomes a threat because it radically changes the narrative. These people have artists, artistry, an art scene, and art centers. They celebrate theaters. They have book launches. They have music conservatories. Then, they’re not quite the terrorists that the media has portrayed them as…CELINE: In your paintings, you often use vivid colors and almost dream-like images. What role does symbolism play in your work? And what do you hope your viewers take away from these images?MALAK: I started painting in 2014 following the murder of my neighbor. She was standing in front of me, two blocks away, and she was torn into pieces. And growing up in the art environment, I was always painting, but not in a cathartic way and not on a daily basis. But since that time, I was driven by an urgency to make political art. I needed to find a way to survive and to distract myself from what I was seeing. There was destruction, there was blood, there was motherhood under bombardment. Then, I started gaining more attention and a following. This gave me a lot of hope. That my struggle was seen. That there were people who really cared. That gave me a sense of mission.My work started becoming more a celebration, more beautiful. I celebrated the sun, birds, the flowers, and the beauty of the landscape, which I had enjoyed growing up. But then, after October 7, I stopped using colors. I was like, khallas (in Arabic, primarily means “done,” “finished,” “it’s over,” or “enough,” Google AI). This was beyond my worst expectations. I departed from my older style, which was vivid and beautiful, because I just couldn’t see colors anymore. It’s such a depressing time. I’m now slowly going back to colors, but not with the same sense of joy, because I struggle to find joy when my people are being starved.CÉLINE: Yeah… what colors are you using now?MALAK: I am using mostly black and white. There is one I showed from 2021; it’s called You and I, which is like two figures embracing each other. And the rest was work I did recently. One of them is a large painting called Gaza. It’s a Phoenix with other elements.CÉLINE: What is coming for you in the next few months? Your career as an artist has been blossoming. You just illustrated the book of Francesca Albanese (an Italian legal scholar and expert on human rights who has served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories since May 1, 2022, Wikipedia). How did that come about? You and Francesca collaborating together, and what’s coming up for you in the next six months?MALAK: I met Francesca back in 2010. There is a chapter in her book about how we met, about my life story, and our first meeting in London. When exhibition that the school held, and Francesca was visiting. She asked me if I was selling my work. And I was like, no, they’re not for sale. I was very shy, but then a few years later, she discovered my work, and she made the connection that I was the same child she had met back in 2010, and then we met in London. We spoke, I went to her events, and we had dinners together. And, yeah, before the book came about, she said that she would love to have my work on the cover.CÉLINE: I love that for you. In the face of ongoing displacement and violence in Palestine, how do you see your work being of service… I think you touched on it in the beginning, saying that it’s the humanization. But if you can expand a little bit more on that and tell me how your work is really an instrument of the liberation.MALAK: Two million people are starving. When I think of that, it makes me feel that I’m not really doing anything, and then I’m dismissive of my work. I’m being honest. I’m just really doing my role as an artist. Yes, I’m part of the culture. But it’s hard for me to say anything when the genocide is still running, when people are really starving. I don’t feel like liberation can happen from London; I don’t think liberation happens from Paris. We’re protesting, and that’s what we should do. It’s an active protest. In this moment of our history, we are in so much pain and so much trauma…CÉLINE: I also feel like we are not doing anything or enough. Nothing feels enough. How do you feel about that?MALAK: It sucks. It’s like this feeling of helplessness. But I also don’t blame myself, because I know that it’s bigger than us.CÉLINE: Did you lose your home?MALAK: The family house: it has been flattened. My uncle’s collection, the work he collected… it has all been flattened.CÉLINE: Oh my God, I’m so sorry. How long have you been in London?MALAK: I left the day before the seventh of October.CÉLINE: Oh, my God, really? How did you manage to leave?MALAK: I was doing my Master of Fine Arts in London at Central Saint Martins. And I was supposed to leave in September, and I couldn’t; I went to the border, and they sent me back. They finally let me cross the border on the fifth of October, through Jordan, and then the sixth of October was officially my first day in London.CÉLINE: And the next day, October 7.MALAK: I saw the news, and I was like, I’ve got things to do. I’m running late to my class. But then my mom texted me. She said, the minute I left, they bombed my school. Then they started their evacuation journey. The men got separated from the women, and then they all went south. I come from the north, from Gaza City. But they all went south and stayed there for months, and then they managed to leave.CÉLINE: Now they are gone?MALAK: Yeah, they are. They left in March 2024, to Egypt for one year, and they came to London just last month. Yes, we are united. And I had to go to the court to bring them here legally, because they were not allowed entry to the UK. Their visas were rejected. So we had to fight for that family reunification." } , "relatedposts": [ { "title" : "Narrative Sovereignty in the American Wing of The Met: Don't Miss ENCODED at the MET", "author" : "", "category" : "", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/narrative-sovereignty-in-the-american-wing-of-the-met", "date" : "2025-12-22 12:58:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_Hidden_Exhibition.jpg", "excerpt" : "As artists and multicultural activists, we did not come to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American Wing seeking permission, instead we showed up to the work with intention, responsibility, and a commitment to truth. ENCODED: Change the Story, Change the Future exists because silence is not neutral, presence without agency is insufficient and solidarity across values-based creativity is essential for liberation.", "content" : "As artists and multicultural activists, we did not come to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American Wing seeking permission, instead we showed up to the work with intention, responsibility, and a commitment to truth. ENCODED: Change the Story, Change the Future exists because silence is not neutral, presence without agency is insufficient and solidarity across values-based creativity is essential for liberation.The American Wing is often described as a celebration of American art, yet it also functions as a carefully curated archive of colonial mythology and westward expansion propaganda. Its paintings and sculptures rehearse familiar narratives: conquest framed as destiny, extraction framed as progress, whiteness framed as purity, Indigenous absence framed as inevitability. These works are not merely historical artifacts; they are instruments of narrative power. They encode ideas about belonging, legitimacy, and nationhood, ideas that continue to shape cultural consciousness and public policy today. ENCODED intervenes in this institutional space not to negate history, but to complicate it. Using augmented reality, the exhibition overlays Indigenous artistic expression and counter-narratives directly onto famous works in the American Wing, reframing them through Indigenous epistemologies, lived experience, and historical truth. This is not an act of erasure. It is an act of expansion and an overt insistence that American art history is incomplete without Indigenous voice, presence, and critique.At its core, ENCODED is grounded in the principle of narrative sovereignty. Narrative sovereignty asserts that communities most impacted by historical and ongoing harm such as Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant people, Palestinians, Pacific Islanders, Trans folks and the working class all must have the authority to tell their own stories, in their own words, and within the institutions that have historically excluded or misrepresented them. This is not a symbolic gesture. It is a democratic imperative.Democracy depends on access to truth. When museums present a singular, sanitized vision of history, they do not merely reflect power, they reinforce it. The American Wing has long upheld myths of “taming the West” and the so-called exhaustion of empire, narratives that obscure the violence of settler colonialism, normalize Indigenous dispossession and chattel slavery. ENCODED challenges these myths by making visible what has been omitted: resistance, survival, continuity, solidarity and accountability. For me, I also hope this intervention reflects back to museum goers and viewers the perils of authoritarianism, fascism and ongoing colonial projects such as legacy media consolidation, rapid creation of datacenters to produce AI, cutting access to healthcare, education, rights, or the current US regime’s attempt to erase history by any means necessary.The artists participating in ENCODED are not responding nostalgically to the past. They are engaging the present. Their work examines how colonial narratives persist in contemporary systems including environmental destruction justified by extraction, racial hierarchies reinforced through cultural storytelling, and institutions that benefit from the aesthetics of inclusion while resisting structural change. These are not abstract critiques; they are lived realities and for me deep lessons that have been shaped by having formerly worked at a neocolonial conservation nonprofit ran by wealthy cis wyt men and their enablers for nearly five years.Artistic integrity, in this context, cannot be separated from ethical responsibility. For too long, the art world has upheld a false binary between aesthetics and politics, suggesting that rigor diminishes when artists engage power directly. ENCODED rejects this premise. Integrity is not neutrality. Integrity is the willingness to tell the truth, even when it destabilizes comfort or prestige. Walking with integrity can be painful and takes courage.Importantly, ENCODED is not positioned as a protest staged outside the institution, nor as a request for institutional validation. It is an act of presence with agency. The project uses accessible technology to meet audiences where they are, inviting participation rather than reverence. Viewers scan QR codes and encounter layered narratives that ask them to look again, listen differently, and question inherited assumptions. Except for a few organized tours, the experience is self-guided, decentralized, and deliberately democratic. It’s also fun, and it is so special to hear the familiar sounds from the ENCODED pieces ring throughout the galleries signalling that kin is close by.This kinship network and accessibility is central to the work. Cultural literacy should not be gated by academic language, curatorial authority, white exceptionalism or economic privilege. By operating through personal devices, ENCODED rejects the museum’s traditional hierarchy of knowledge and affirms that interpretation is a shared civic space. The exhibition does not dictate conclusions; it creates conditions for reckoning and deep dialogue.Solidarity is another foundational principle of the project. ENCODED brings together Indigenous artists across nations and disciplines, in relationship with Black, Brown, and allied communities who recognize that colonialism is not a single-issue structure. The logics that dispossessed Indigenous peoples are the same logics that underwrote slavery, environmental exploitation, the seizing of Palestine, forced child mining labor of cobalt in Congo and in general global empire. Working in solidarity does not collapse difference; it honors specificity while resisting division and acknowledging historic patterns of systemic oppression.In a cultural landscape shaped by scarcity and competition, ENCODED models an alternative, one rooted in collective presence, shared resources, and mutual accountability. The project refuses the extractive norms of both empire and the contemporary art economy, offering instead a relational approach grounded in care, collaboration, and long-term impact on community.The decision to situate ENCODED within the American Wing was deliberate. Indigenous art has too often been confined to anthropological contexts or framed as premodern, separate from the narrative of American art. ENCODED asserts what has always been true: Indigenous peoples are not peripheral to American history; we are foundational to it. Our stories do not belong on the margins, nor do they belong solely to the past or through a white gaze.Yet presence without counter-narrative risks assimilation. ENCODED insists that visibility must be accompanied by authorship. By intervening directly within the American Wing, the project challenges the authority of colonial framing and invites institutions to reckon with their role in shaping public memory. Our hope is that eventually the Met will see this as an opportunity to engage in discussion and support its presence well into 2026.There is risk in this work. Naming colonial propaganda within revered institutions invites discomfort, defensiveness, and critique. But risk is inseparable from integrity. Artists and cultural workers are accountable not only to institutions and audiences, but to future generations. The question is not whether institutions will change, but whether artists will continue to lead with courage when they do not.ENCODED is an offering and a provocation. It asks what it means to inherit a cultural legacy and whether we are willing to transform it. Empire is not exhausted; it is contested. And art remains one of the most powerful sites of that contestation. When we change the story, we do change the future. Not through erasure, but through expansion. Not through dominance, but through relationship.Ultimately, ENCODED affirms that art is not merely a reflection of society, but a tool for shaping it and that when artists from the margins claim space at the center, together and with integrity, we open pathways toward a more honest, inclusive, and democratic cultural future. Join us.To access ENCODED review the exhibit website for instructions. While at the Met scan the QR code and click through the prompts for the self guided tour.https://www.encodedatthemet.com" } , { "title" : "The Aesthetics of Atrocity:: Lockheed Martin’s Streetwear Pivot", "author" : "Louis Pisano", "category" : "", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/the-aesthetics-of-atrocity", "date" : "2025-12-20 10:30:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_Lockheed_StreetWar.jpg", "excerpt" : "On December 12, The Business of Fashion published an article titled “The Unlikely Rise and Uncertain Future of Lockheed Martin Streetwear,” detailing the world’s largest arms manufacturer’s entrance into casual apparel.", "content" : "On December 12, The Business of Fashion published an article titled “The Unlikely Rise and Uncertain Future of Lockheed Martin Streetwear,” detailing the world’s largest arms manufacturer’s entrance into casual apparel.Through a licensing deal with South Korea’s Doojin Yanghang Corp., Lockheed turns fighter jet graphics, corporate slogans, and its star logo into gorpcore staples. Oversized outerwear, tactical pants, and advanced synthetic fabrics sell out at Seoul pop-ups like the Hyundai department store with young Korean consumers chasing the edgy, functional vibe. Andy Koh, a Seoul-based content creator, tells BoF that while arms manufacturing is, in theory, political, he has never encountered widespread discomfort among Korean consumers. “As long as it looks cool and the product functions as expected,” he says, “they seem okay with it.”This trend aligns with a broader South Korean fashion phenomenon: licensing logos from global non-fashion brands to create popular streetwear lines. Examples include National Geographic puffers, Yale crewnecks, Kodak retro tees, CNN hoodies, Discovery jackets, Jeep outdoor wear, and university apparel from institutions like Harvard and UCLA. These licensed collections, often featuring media, academia, sports leagues, or adventure themes, have become staples on online retailers like Musinsa and in brick-and-mortar stores, propelled by K-pop influence and a tech-savvy youth market that make these odd crossovers multimillion-dollar successes.Lockheed, however, is categorically different. Its core business is not exploration, education, or journalism. It is industrialized death, and its arrival in fashion forces a reckoning with how far commodification can stretch.Having spent years in the military, maybe I’m the wrong person to critique this. Or maybe I’m exactly the right one. I know what weapons are for, how they’re used, and the human cost they carry. Lockheed manufactures F-16 and F-35 fighter jets, Hellfire missiles, and precision-guided systems that human rights organizations have repeatedly linked to civilian casualties across multiple conflicts. In Yemen, U.S.-supplied weapons incorporating Lockheed technology contributed to thousands of civilian deaths since 2015, most notoriously the 2018 airstrike on a school bus in Saada that killed dozens of children. In Gaza, since October 2023, Lockheed-supplied F-35s and munitions have formed the backbone of air operations that Amnesty International and other watchdogs have flagged for potential violations of international humanitarian law, cases now under examination by the International Court of Justice.In 2024, the company reported $71 billion in revenue, almost entirely from military contracts, with more than 1,100 F-35s already delivered worldwide and production lines running hotter than ever. That staggering scale is the reality lurking beneath a logo now casually printed on everyday apparel.So why does the planet’s largest arms manufacturer license its brand to streetwear? The answer seems to be twofold: easy money and sophisticated image laundering. Licensing delivers low-risk royalties from Korea’s reported $35-40 billion apparel market with virtually no operational headache. Lockheed simply collects checks while a third-party manufacturer handles design, production, distribution, and deals with all the mess of retail.The far more ambitious goal, however, is reputational refurbishment. Doojin deliberately markets the line around “future-oriented technical aesthetics” and “aerospace innovation,” leaning on cutting-edge fabrics to conjure high-tech futurism instead of battlefield carnage. By late 2025, as U.S. favorability in South Korea continued to slide amid trade tensions and regional geopolitical shifts, the brand quietly de-emphasized its American roots, according to Lockheed representatives. The strategy clearly tries to sever the logo from political controversy and plant it firmly in youth culture, where aesthetic appeal routinely outmuscles ethical concern.Lockheed has honed this kind of rebranding for decades. Their corporate brochures overflow with talk of “driving innovation” and “advancing scientific discovery,” spotlighting STEM scholarships, veteran hiring initiatives, and rapid-response disaster aid. The clothing itself carries the same sanitized messaging. One prominent slogan reads “Ensuring those we serve always stay ahead of ready”, euphemistic corporate-speak that sounds heroic until you remember that “those we serve” includes forces deploying Hellfire missiles against civilian targets. Other pieces feature F-35 graphics paired with copy declaring the jet “strengthens national security, enhances global partnerships, and powers economic growth”. It’s textbook PR varnish. Instruments designed for lethal efficiency, now rebranded as symbols of progress and prosperity.We’ve also seen this trick before: Fast fashion brands that slap “sustainable” labels on sweatshop products. Tech giants that fund glamorous art installations while they harvest user data. Oil companies that rebrand themselves as forward-thinking “energy” players as the Earth’s climate burns. Lockheed, though, traffics in something uniquely irreversible: export-grade death. By licensing its identity to apparel, multibillion-dollar arms contracts are reduced to mere intellectual property; civilian casualties dissolved into, simply, background static.In other words, vibes overpower victims. And when those vibes are stamped with the logo of the planet’s preeminent death merchant, resistance feels futile.Gorpcore has always drawn from military surplus for its rugged utility: endless cargo pockets, indestructible nylons, tactical silhouettes born in combat and repurposed for city streets. Brands like Arc’teryx, The North Face, and Supreme mine that heritage for authenticity and performance. After World War II, army fatigues became symbols of genuine rebellion, worn by anti-war protesters as an act of defiance against the establishment. Today, the dynamic threatens to invert entirely. The establishment itself, the world’s preeminent arms dealer, now supplies the “authentic” merchandise, turning subversion into subtle endorsement.Streetwear grew out of skate culture, hip-hop, and grassroots rebellion against mainstream norms. Importing the aesthetics of atrocity risks converting that legacy into compliance, rendering militarism the newest version of mainstream cool. For a generation immersed in filtered feeds and rapid trend cycles, Lockheed’s logo can sit comfortably beside NASA patches or National Geographic emblems, conveniently severed from the charred wreckage in Saada or the devastation in Gaza. Research on “ethical fading” demonstrates how strong visual design can mute moral alarms, a phenomenon intensified in Korea’s hyper-trendy ecosystem, where mandatory military service may further desensitize young consumers to defense branding while K-pop’s global engine drives relentless consumption.If the line proves durable, escalation feels inevitable. Palantir, another cornerstone of the defense-tech world, has already gone there, hyping limited merch drops that sell out in hours: $99 athletic shorts stamped “PLTR—TECH,” $119 nylon totes, hoodies emblazoned with CEO Alex Karp’s likeness or slogans about “dominating” threats. What’s to stop Northrop Grumman from launching its own techwear line? Or BAE Systems from dropping high-end collaborations?Lockheed already licenses merchandise worldwide through various agencies; broader international rollouts beyond Korea seem only a matter of time. Backlash is possible, boycotts from ethically minded buyers, perhaps even regulatory scrutiny as anti-militarism sentiment swells. Gorpcore’s longstanding flirtation with military aesthetics could calcify into outright fetish, obliterating whatever daylight remained between practical function and state-sanctioned propaganda.Yet, history suggests that in oversaturated markets, “cool” almost always trumps conscience. Lockheed’s streetwear pivot is a stark illustration of how fashion and culture launder raw power, enabling the machinery of war to conceal itself among hype, hoodies, and sold-out drops." } , { "title" : "Our Era of Insecurity: How Unaffordability and Uncertainty Became Our Monoculture", "author" : "Alissa Quart", "category" : "essays", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/our-era-of-insecurity", "date" : "2025-12-16 11:56:00 -0500", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_Unaffordability.jpg", "excerpt" : "In 2025, I’ve interviewed a number of people who saw themselves as living in “survival mode.” At first, their professions might surprise you. They are government contractors, public broadcasters, and tech workers, formerly safe professions. And some of their jobs disappeared this year due to DOGE “efficiency” cuts, the dismantling of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and AI acceleration. They are among the millions now living through an experience that I call terra infirma, a new level of economic and social uncertainty.", "content" : "In 2025, I’ve interviewed a number of people who saw themselves as living in “survival mode.” At first, their professions might surprise you. They are government contractors, public broadcasters, and tech workers, formerly safe professions. And some of their jobs disappeared this year due to DOGE “efficiency” cuts, the dismantling of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and AI acceleration. They are among the millions now living through an experience that I call terra infirma, a new level of economic and social uncertainty.It’s the mood that encapsulates so much of Trump 2.0. A November 2025 Pew study found that almost half of U.S. adults are uncertain about having enough retirement income. When it comes to health insurance, they may be waiting for their ACA health subsidies to sunset or for their partner’s premiums to skyrocket. Addressing unaffordability and uncertainty is even the newest theme song in politics, most recently in the Maine campaign of gubernatorial candidate, oyster farmer and military veteran Graham Platner.Seventy years ago, the critic Raymond Williams used the term “structure of feeling” to describe a collective emotion that is tied to a time and place, as well as social and economic conditions. Today, our “structure of feeling” is uncertainty. You could even take it further, and call “precarity” the last monoculture as it’s a condition shared by so many Americans. As Astra Taylor, author of The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart, says, insecurity is a “defining feature of our time.”As far as mass moods go, “insecurity” is certainly a disconcerting one. The economist Pranab Bardhan writes in A World of Insecurity, that “insecurity, more than inequality, agitates people.” What makes 2025 different from other years, however, is the degree to which we all experienced this precarity. The usual uncertainty level has been turned up from a whine to a 135-decibel air raid scream.What’s happened? Tariffs have raised our costs. Medicaid will be scaled back over the next decade by a trillion dollars. Meanwhile, dozens of Venezuelan fishermen have been exploded by our armed forces. And while two-thirds of Americans are already living with economic insecurity, their feelings about it don’t necessarily involve the discrepancy between their lot and those of the very rich. As Steven Semler, the co-founder of Security Policy Reform Institute (SPRI), explains it to me, these Americans have a mindset that “is more fearful of poverty than aspirations of being a millionaire.”The people of terra infirma do describe such fears. In the words of one, they’ve experienced a “mental health decline and a loss of purpose” and in another, “a serious financial pinch”, because they are their family’s main breadwinner. Uncertainty is the common refrain of the growing number of laid-off software workers, according to Human-Centered Design scholar Samuel So. In addition to feeling destabilized about their professional security for the first time, software workers have experienced disillusionment and alienation from the technology industry’s “military and police partnerships.” Jobs themselves are part of this insecurity, with never-ending hiring processes, the race of automation, and ghost jobs, the twisted contemporary version of the perished Russian serfs of Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls, except now professional opportunities are offered that don’t actually exist. People are also nervous about their future, because insecurity is a temporal emotion, as much about the future as the present. Many of us wonder how our security will further erode, as our health plan premiums soar, or as our subways catch on fire, or as ICE comes to our cities. This causes not only stress in the moment, but discomfort about what lies ahead.Of course, it’s not just Trump 2.0 alone that has caused this. The forces behind Trump’s win in 2024—and the anger at the traditional Democratic party—have something to do with this disposition, as well. In the weeks leading up to Trump’s election, people surveyed by the Federal Reserve Board ranked one of their top concerns as pricing and their top concern as inflation. Disparate phenomena—AI slop, job cuts, relentless and confusing cutbacks in crucial academic research—are entwined. It’s as if they were all figures in a paranoiac Thomas Pynchon novel. In a “world of insecurity,” as economist Bardhan writes, instabilities interlink. In other words, what I think of as “informational insecurity”—bots, false ads, fake news—often joins up with economic instability.These different instances of confusion and instability blend into a gnarly color wheel of distress. Economic distress, sure—that is also accentuated by societal, cultural, environmental, and physical examples of insecurity we see all around us, every day.How do we pick apart these knotted-together insecurities? For starters, we can embrace candidates who address economic uncertainty head-on, including New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, Seattle’s new mayor, Katie Wilson, and Virginia’s governor-elect Abigail Spanberger. These politicians, as Nicholas Jacobs has written of Maine candidate Platner, are “speaking to grievances that are real, measurable, and decades in the making.”Another line of defense is being brave and grasping for community in any way we can. I think of the ordinary people blowing whistles near Chicago to alert their neighbors when ICE showed up in their suburban towns: they were accidental upstanders, refusing to be part of manufactured uncertainty and instability.One traditional definition of security is “freedom from fear.” And while we are unlikely to experience that freedom from fear as long as the populist American Right continues its goosestep, it’s also important to remember that uncertainty, like any “structure of feeling,” is an unfinished emotion.Yes, insecurity shapes us now. But we, as a collective, are so much more than it. Because even if we are living in a time of such negative uncertainty, it won’t necessarily stay that way. We can still redefine ourselves and, most importantly, recognize we are not alone." } ] }